Moldova to pay €24,000 damages under new ECHR decision

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found Moldova guilty in a new case. The authorities are to pay €20,000 damages and €4,000 court costs to a former detainee, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to a communiqué from the Association “Jurists for Human Rights”, the 31-year-old plaintiff from Ialoveni in 2005 served time in the open-type prison in Goian village. The young man complained that he was caught and beaten by a group of police officers outside the penitentiary, when he was allowed to go home. He said he was left to lie unconscious on a bridge at a temperature below zero degrees Celsius. Consequently, he suffered severe frostbite and remained without eight fingers and toes. The ECHR ruled that the man’s rights stipulated in the European Convention on Human Rights, including the right to life and the ban on the use of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, were violated. It also held that the investigation into this maltreatment case was inappropriate.